Summary
Minnesota Governor Tim Walz has criticized the Harris-Walz 2024 presidential campaign for playing it too “safe,” saying they should have held more in-person events and town halls.
In a Politico interview, Walz—known for labeling Trump and Vance as “weird”—blamed their cautious approach partly on the abbreviated 107-day campaign timeline after Harris became the nominee in August.
Using football terminology, he said Democrats were in a “prevent defense” when “we never had anything to lose, because I don’t think we were ever ahead.”
While acknowledging his share of responsibility for the loss, Walz is returning to the national spotlight and didn’t rule out a 2028 presidential run, saying, “I’m not saying no.”
Too safe? No, they were too center.
Gee who would have thought that completely ignoring the anti-war/genocide crowd and courting the CHENEYS “moderate Republicans” while keeping absolutely silent about Medicare for all and touting a “keep America lethal” platform would have backfired for one of the least popular politicians ever who was just anointed as the presidential candidate without any sort of primary at all. I’m so confused!
Why would anyone on the right vote for the “right-lite” party when they have a full on fucking Nazi party?
I am convinced 'Murica generally is too racist to vote a black person into office. Obama was only voted into office because he is an extremely charismatic and charming person. So much so that he was voted into office in spite of being black. Kamala is neither charismatic nor charming. Also, there is sexism and she’s a woman.
Obama was only voted into office because he is an extremely charismatic and charming person.
I think it had more to do with the conditions at the time. He was one of the few politicians with a national following from either party who had always vocally opposed the Iraq War. His chief opponent in the Democratic Primary was Hilary Clinton, who had voted for the invasion in 2003 even though she was opposed to the war by 2008. On the Republican side, McCain was still saying in 2008 that his vote to invade was a good decision and that he’d do it again.
It’s hard to remember now, but the Iraq War was a MASSIVE issue in the primaries and early general election in 2008. The country was almost unanimously opposed to it by that point, including Republican voters. W Bush was massively unpopular, and that was dragging down the entire GOP. Then the Great Recession hit and Bush/the GOP took the entire blame since they’d he’d been President for 8 years and they’d held the majority in both houses of Congress for most of the Bush presidency.
By that point, a corpse with a (D) next to their name could have defeated McCain. Obama is absolutely incredibly charismatic and a once-in-a-generation political mind. But 2008 was also a perfect storm of factors against the Republican Party. There was virtually no way a Democrat could lose that election.
Maybe they should copy what Bernie Sanders is doing. He’s not even running and packing out town hall meetings. Who knew being against oligarchs, authoritarians, corporate cronyism and for the middle class would appeal to people?
Except if they copied what Bernie is doing, it would include not making a presidential run. Part of the reason Bernie is able to do what he does is he only needs to keep his relatively smaller electorate happy instead of having to appeal to a whole nation, including people somewhat philosophically opposed to him.
This is a really good point. And yet, movements are started in the wings. It’s really hard to get people all fired up with some tepid centrism.
Tim Walz should theoretically be good at that. While most politicians are well to do, he’s never made much money and has a reputation of being a regular person, for the regular people. But since he was running for VP he had to parrot Harris’ stance on everything.
If he could go out and speak plainly with a clear message like Bernie does, be himself and tell us what he really thinks, at least we’d be able to make a judgement call on whether to support him. I don’t know if he has that in him though. Unless he really did learn that “playing it safe” (i.e. acting like a Dem) does not work any more.
Walz has offered to do town halls in red states where Republicans have stopped doing them.
Exactly. I would like to see what he has to offer on his own terms. Maybe I’ll support him, maybe not. But it was obvious through the entire campaign that he was holding back. The one thing he did that got the most traction in the campaign was calling Republicans “weird”, and he was told by Dem leadership to stop doing that.
It’s really hard to decide if Dems are just that incredibly incompetent, or if they are actual controlled opposition. I think it might be a combination of the two.
People on the left screamed this as soon as they took over from sleeping baby joe. We said “PLEASE put some OOMPH into it! Stop regurgitating Corporate Dems platitudes!”
And people in the republican-adjacent wing of the party told them to shut up.
They just don’t get it. The game has changed, people are used to high energy fast paced delivery from social media. A presidential candidate needs to be engaging and deliver a super condensed message that’s shareable. I don’t know anybody in my personal life that was excited Kamala was running and I’m from the bay area.
Granted Biden withdrawing so close to the election left them without much time to strategize, I don’t see them really playing it too differently. The legacy Dems are old and corrupt, they don’t understand that being cozy with corporations is gross and that we want fiery new blood. They’ll probably continue doing the same shit, playing the same old games until it’s too late.
Well, they tried social media with calling Harris a “brat” because some popstar did. Well turns out having millionaire and billionaire capitalist artists embrace you does not rally people. Turns out people are more sensible than thinking “hey this musician i like said i should vote for this one. Guess that is all i need”. Also i found this kind of endorsement seeking quite insulting as it shows how little intelligence they expect of their voters.
Yeah it’s quite weird how they just used a popular song of the same year as a brand.
I’m also still baffled how people said “You can vote Harris and not endorse her” and then another popular artist that said “I’m voting for Harris as it’s the only reasonable choice, but I’m not endorsing her as I’m not a fan of her positions of war and minorities” and people got mad at her for doing exactly what people have told progressives.
They THOUGHT they were doing all the things you listed, because they paid “top dollar” for “top democratic strategists”. The whole system the Dems run on is rotten to the core. It all needs to be thrown out
Exactly, these clowns hired the same types of people who barely pull off wins despite being the majority party. They’re really good at collecting money and paying themselves, but really shit at winning.
The right has been stacking the deck, blatantly, for thirty fucking years. I’m a big fan of awarding electrical college points based on congressional districts. All of a sudden those cities in deeply red states get a voice.
